


Ram'ser

by GraceEliz



Series: take a shot - one of each [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, F/M, Gen, Hardeen arc, Oneshot in Three Sections, Post-Hardeen Arc, Shadow Obi-Wan, Sniper Obi-Wan, Sort Of, this man knows his way around a gun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: The girl’s montrals and lekku are dim with long-term grief and stress. Gently, he stretches out in the Force as best he can to her, reaching under his shields to drape around her like a shawl or a warm arm on a cold night. To his surprise, she darts in, wrapping her arms around him.“I missed you so much,” she chokes.Obi-Wan blinks down at her, tucking her into his side. “I missed you too,” he murmurs. She stays there, pressed into him-in-another-body, until they pull into orbit above Coruscant, where his young friends pull reluctantly away so he can be returned to himself.He can’t wait.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze
Series: take a shot - one of each [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1980658
Comments: 18
Kudos: 243





	Ram'ser

**Author's Note:**

> Really into Mando'a presently. Ram'ser: marksman or sniper.

They three are, for want of any more accurate description, lurking out of the path of the Vode. His Padawan is venting. “But I don’t understand why it had to be you,” Ahsoka continues. She is frowning out at the stars, perched atop a cabinet in what should be his office. “Why you, Master?”

He sighs. Anakin is still deadly silent. Ordinarily, after having to do undercover work, he’d pick his Padawan up from the crèche or their apartment, go for ice cream and burgers at Dex’s, and have a low conversation about what he did in the days he was away. Here, however, the best he can do is reheated rations and ice tea. “Nobody else was available who has the skills.”

“Banthashit.”

“Language, Anakin,” he scolds tiredly. His brother’s Force Signature is a mess, far darker than it should be. Even after Mortis. “I had you, so I couldn’t be a Shadow – which is what I was going to do.”

Ahsoka stares. “Really?”

“Really. Quinlan, Siri and I were set to be trained into a team,” he says quietly, watching the dancing stars. They had been excited – he should have been knighted a few months after he was, should have disappeared into the criminal underworld to join Siri and bring down a gang. Should have been, should have been, should have been. But there had been Naboo, the death of Qui-Gon, his instability, the pressure from having to take on a child. If he hadn’t had the Shadow training, would he have survived? He shakes off the thoughts. “Regardless, I was the only Master in the Temple at the time of this particular mission who could have taken it on. Athleticism, dead shot, criminal underworld experience.”

“Where did you get criminal experience?”

Obi-Wan looks over at his Padawan – yes, as much his as Anakin’s. “Dex is one I consider a friend, little one. Where would a Jedi make a friend like Dex, if not the criminal underworld?”

“You met him when you and your friends went for midnight burgers after someone’s Knighting,” interrupts Anakin. He still isn’t looking them – not even Ahsoka – but he feels a little less furious in the Force, the pain and deep-held anger leaking slowly away into the Force at large.

Obi-Wan laughs softly. It throws him off, here, hearing Rako Hardeen laugh at something his friends say. Going by the twinge of discomfort in Ahsoka’s Force Signature it throws her too. Anakin… well, he isn’t trying to kill him anymore. There’s that. “There’s a bit more to the story than that, but it is true, yes. Fact remains, though, that Dex is our key to Coruscant’s underworld. So that’s where I go. News on Siri, news on what ‘that gods-damned Kiffar’ has done now, news on how people see the Jedi. It isn’t great, right now. But I can tell you something,” he says contemplatively, “Jedi aren’t as far a cry from popular as the Senate want us to believe.”

They are all quiet, for a time, as the star whizz by on the way home – home to Coruscant. Force, he can’t wait to be in the Temple again, to have his own hands again. That’s one of the things he missed most. 

“Do you know, I’ve never had to aim a sniper without my own eyes and hands before,” he comments. Anakin gives him the hardest side-eye since he last stayed awake for three days; Ahsoka looks suddenly pensive, but not as worried as that particular statement is going to make the Mind Healers back home. 

“How did you blend in to terrorists and thieves so well? You stabbed a guy in the hand. Fin. Whatever,” she asks him. 

Ah. Yes. Well, how much do they truly need to know about his various incidents? “I’m pretty well set up to be a bounty hunter. I was a terrorist, technically, when I was a kid.”

Anakin finally breaks his silence. “What the fuck? What else haven’t you told me?”

“Do you want that chronologically or alphabetically,” he deadpans in response, not gracing the twin glares he receives with a response. “I was with the Young when I was thirteen, and yes. We were a rebel group. I learned to lead. I learned to shoot. I learned as I grew up how to be a hunter, to be the sort of man who can walk into a bounty bar and fit in. So, when it came to this… Siri is already working. Quinlan is the wrong side of the galaxy. That left me.”

Ahsoka slides of the cabinet, coming to stand close to him. “Sorry.”

He frowns down at her. For what? Why should she be sorry? 

“We shouldn’t have – we should have trusted you more,” she admits quietly, twisting her fingers together.   
“Yes,” he agrees gently, “but I understand why you didn’t.”

The girl’s montrals and lekku are dim with long-term grief and stress. Gently, he stretches out in the Force as best he can to her, reaching under his shields to drape around her like a shawl or a warm arm on a cold night. To his surprise, she darts in, wrapping her arms around him. 

“I missed you so much,” she chokes. 

Obi-Wan blinks down at her, tucking her into his side. “I missed you too,” he murmurs. She stays there, pressed into him-in-another-body, until they pull into orbit above Coruscant, where his young friends pull reluctantly away so he can be returned to himself. 

He can’t wait. 

The shooting range in the Temple doesn’t see much action. Some days, nobody uses it at all, especially with the reduced number of Jedi in the Temple under current circumstances. It makes it peaceful – if the buzz-whirr of reloading his rifle, the rifle he used as Rako Hardeen, could be considered something peaceful. One, two, five, thirty dead hits. Too easy, he grumbles to himself, leaning down to fiddle the controls. The stretch aches, but aches good: the healthy ache of being back in his own body after so long in the bounty hunter’s. Hanging off the ledge by his legs without any worry of being taken out by a jealous “teammate” feels good. Being home in the Temple feels good. Using his own hands, his own eyes, his own voice, it all feels so good.

The orange dots race over the screens, and he hunkers down, ready for enough of a challenge to draw him out of his guilt and pain. Meditation for the man who sleeps with his sabers beside the bed   
and often straps a blaster under his robes. 

Flash.

Flash.

Flash-flash.

Had anyone mourned? When he came back, was anyone reeling in that mix of relief-gratitude that he feels every time one of his friends, his family, returns from the dead? Or is he just another piece on the chessboard of this ridiculous war. Another one of the many beings tossed about the galaxy in a war nobody can find the justification for. 

There is no might-be. There is only what must be and what is.

What must be.

Flash. The target sparkles out in an orange whirl, signalling the end of the round. Sometimes, what must be is absolutely shit. 

“That was awesome,” he hears a voice. Not a Force Signature he knows, but it seems to be a young one. He turns to it, reminding himself he isn’t a bounty hunter or a rebel here, but a teacher. Softness will not get him damaged. 

“Practice makes perfect.”

The young Knight – no, a Senior Padawan, his braid still hanging down his neck – grins. “Where did you learn that?”

Melida/Daan, a child, armed with twin blasters and no lightsaber and a critical mind. Mand’alor, in the hell of civil war, using a blaster to protect the peace-loving Duchess. A dozen worlds on the run, taking out small jobs undercover to bring in credits. The Temple, refreshing his skill in sleepless nights as his new Padawan slept. Honing it sharper and sharper, down in the makeshift ranges on the Negotiator. “Doesn’t matter.”

The Senior Padawan nods, shuffling a little. He looks like Mace, something about his eyes maybe. Haruun Kal, that’s the species. “Teach me anyway?” he asks, hesitant. “You’re, uh. You’re the best shot, Master Windu says.”

The best shot, huh? That’s quite the accolade. But it is true, however much it sounds like pride, Obi-Wan is one of the best shots in the Order. He drills with his men almost as often as Rex runs drills for the 501st. They have bets on his trick-shots. On plenty occasions he’s given lessons, when enough Padawans or Knights or the odd Master want a course of lessons. “I’m not a kind teacher, when it comes to blasters,” he warns, knowing the young Knight will pick up how serious he is. “Can’t make promises that you won’t hate it.”

“Jedi don’t hate.”

No. They don’t. “Bounty hunters and rebels and child soldiers do.”

The boy hesitates again, but curiously, he isn’t afraid or rethinking. “Are you alright, teaching me? I’m not imposing or anything?”

Such kindness, such gentility. A pity, really, that he’ll have to teach him how to bury that under hard words. “It’s fine,” he confirms. “Can you shoot?”

“Yes.”

“Choose,” Obi-Wan orders, pointing to the armoury. “Do you want to start now?”

The young Knight-to-be nods sharply, showing devilishly sharp teeth. “Oh, absolutely, Master.”

“So.”

He sits opposite Satine with a heavy sigh. “Indeed.”

“You lied to me, Obi-Wan,” the Duchess states. She doesn’t shout, or make it an angry accusation. Simply a fact: he lied to her, when he once promised he wouldn’t.

“I did.”

Satine nods, her pale hair loose about her face for once, dressed very simply in a short dress and leggings. Her slender fingers wrap around her teacup as she raises it to the light, examining the blue vines painted on. “Why?”

Why indeed. “Because if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me dead. Out of everyone, I wish you hadn’t been involved. But you were here,” he admits with regret in his voice, “and you knew. Good job the funeral was silent, though. The gossip.”

“Incorrigible boy,” she snips, yet her lips twitch minutely as she sips. “Imagine the damage to my reputation.”

Obi-Wan snorts inelegantly, revelling in hearing his noise come from his throat, drinking her in. Beautiful, dangerous Satine Kryze, the Mando’ad who won’t kill. “I am sorry, Satine.”

She smiles at him, sadly. “I know. I’m sorry too.”

“You’re going to kick me around the sparring rings then?” asks the Jedi, flagging for another cup of tea from the waitress. When he leans back in the chair, it presses into his back exactly where and how it should against his body – not the slight discomfort of being in Rako Hardeen’s body, the dysphoria of expectation-versus-reality.

His beautiful woman laughs. “Absolutely.”

His teacup clinks on the table, and he thanks the waitress politely, waiting until she’s moved away with Satine’s empty to continue the line of conversation. “Best of ten in the range?”

“Alright.”

Oh, he hasn’t told her. “I’ve got a new shooting student,” he tells her, gratified by the light of interest as she leans in. “Apparently Mace referred him to me. If you’d come, perhaps having a sort of visiting tutor would be beneficial? I am… I am a regrettably hard teacher, when it comes to this.”

“I will come. It’s been a long time since I saw you with a blaster in your hands,” Satine says, casting her eyes up at him under her lashes. When he doesn’t answer, distracted by simply looking at her, drinking in her shades of skin, the tint of her hair, the light in her eyes, she meets his gaze head-on. “I seem to recall you ogling me just as much as I ogled you, when those finger of yours wrapped around that rifle.”

Oh. Oh, indeed. He’d forgotten those days, when he was coming into his own, teaching Satine how he saw the world – how to sight an impossible shot, and so forth. And he remembers, now, just what she’s referring to.

“I do believe you’re making an insinuation, darling,” Obi-Wan croons rakishly.

Satine’s lips quirk. “Perhaps I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Might do more for this, if y'all want it.


End file.
